


stay around, 'cause you got me wanting

by Riley_Ludicrous



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Back injury, M/M, Mentioned Markhei
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-11
Updated: 2019-03-11
Packaged: 2019-11-15 10:29:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18071702
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riley_Ludicrous/pseuds/Riley_Ludicrous
Summary: When you meet your soulmate, you don’t immediately find out.  You are likely to become close with them, because the universe knows compatibility when it picks soulmates, but you don’t know for sure until you have to be away from them.  After twenty four hours, you’ll find yourself aching for them, in a painfully literal sense.  The pain will fade when you come back into close proximity with them, but it won’t stop coming back until you accept them as your soulmate out loud.





	stay around, 'cause you got me wanting

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Demi_dings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demi_dings/gifts).



When you meet your soulmate, you don’t immediately find out. You are likely to become close with them, because the universe knows compatibility when it picks soulmates, but you don’t know for sure until you have to be away from them. After twenty four hours, you’ll find yourself aching for them, in a painfully literal sense. The pain will fade when you come back into close proximity with them, but it won’t stop coming back until you accept them as your soulmate out loud.

Jaemin and Jeno have always been close. They met in middle school when Jeno moved in next door. They took the bus together, they’ve had at least four classes in the day with each other every year, and they even went on vacations with each others’ families. When they started high school, they joined the same dance team. They were best friends from the first, “Hello!” and they haven’t let each other go.

The drama to the soulmate thing began in high school, when their friend met the new sophomore from Canada and grew the biggest crush for him. Donghyuck was fine through the first semester, and then Christmas vacation came, and he was moaning with an illness that didn’t have a fever or any normal symptoms, just pain. 

They went back to school, and Donghyuck felt better as soon as he saw Mark, but when he told Mark, the sophomore just stared at him with a blank face and explained that he already had a soulmate, one Lucas Wong. Donghyuck was heartbroken for the entire semester, and the soul aches had nowhere to go with no clue of whether his soulmate was just one-sided or someone he had never considered.

Before that, Jaemin had fantasized about soulmates. He’d always convinced Jeno to play pretend games with him about soulmates meeting each other and finding out within a week and falling dramatically in love with the first meeting after that. He wanted to be the best soulmate a person could have: he wanted to be the boyfriend who would give perfect cuddles and share clothing and make dinner for his soulmate. 

Then when the soulmate system apparently failed Donghyuck, it felt like it was failing him, too. That was what he whispered to Jeno with a broken, terrified voice on the bus ride home halfway through March. Jeno said nothing, but he wrapped his arm tightly around Jaemin and pulled his head onto his shoulder so that Jaemin could drip tears onto his shirtsleeve. 

It went on like that through sophomore year and part of junior year, Donghyuck a little sad all the time and Jaemin let down by the system he’d put all his faith in and Jeno holding them both up with his incredible eye smiles that lightened anyone’s heart if they would just take a moment to look. Then Jaemin met Renjun in his graphic arts class and brought him to their table as soon as he heard Renjun admit that he usually sat in the library.

Renjun and Donghyuck somehow took one look at each other and mutually decided, ‘This is the person I want to spend the rest of my life bickering with.’ They verbally sparred all through lunch, but it was the first time Jeno and Jaemin had heard Donghyuck talk so much during lunch since freshman year, so Renjun became a regular at their table. They found out that Renjun had been new to the city their freshman year.

They pulled together a ’00 line sleepover that was really just the four of them a few months into meeting him, and the subject jumped to soulmates, and what would you know, Renjun had had one at least since Christmas break of freshman year when he first experienced the soul-aches. He said he’d experienced them most breaks ever since, whenever his family had visited relatives in their old city, and at that piece of information Jaemin turned to give Jeno an excited look just as Donghyuck figured it out for himself. 

With that, Jaemin was suddenly hopeful again like he hadn’t been in over a year. Everything was better because Donghyuck was better, and the soulmate system still worked, and they even had a new friend to show for it. 

Of course, the trouble really started for Jaemin about then. There was a winter showcase that his and Jeno’s dance team was performing in. He had practiced for that showcase, and he was ready to win. He was ready for the senior members to consider him and Jeno as potential leaders the following school year. One can never start contending for that too early, and he and Jeno had wanted to be co-leaders ever since they first joined the team and saw the special stage leaders got to perform, as either a duet or a solo. 

It wasn’t a ridiculous turn or jump that got him, it was a playful shove from one of the other members and somehow landing just wrong enough that an excruciating pain shot up his back. He bit his tongue and held back tears and tried to get up, but he was stuck on the ground like someone was holding him there except that it was his own traitorous body.

He was sent to a normal hospital first, and they told his parents, and Jeno sitting stubbornly at his side, that he should go to some place out of the state. Jeno could not go with him.

Jeno left for a few hours to help his dad pack him a bag, but beyond that he refused to leave his side for the entire week leading up to his flight. He got a wheelchair to navigate the airport that Jeno pushed him all the way to security in before he was firmly told to go.

The first twenty four hours were numb with pain killers and sleep and getting transferred from stranger to stranger to hospital room. There were nurses speaking gently to him and getting his vitals and a doctor checking him over and physical therapists talking about when and what and how and he barely processed a thing.

Then there was so much pain that he pressed the help button and screamed as nurses rushed to him and asked him to describe his problem, and all he could think was, “It hurts!” They put him on higher grade pain medication than he’d been on before, and it didn’t get better, and they whispered about compounded soul-aches. They put him back on the old pain meds. The pain didn’t go away, but he tried his best not to be a bother with it.

His parents visited on Christmas Day, and he didn’t tell them about it. They didn’t ask.

Jeno FaceTimed him nearly every day, and then the ache would fade ever so slightly to the point where smiling at a screen that only reminded him of the fact that his best friend was so far away became bearable. He had—

—an inkling as to who his soulmate might be. 

Jeno didn’t seem to ache when they were calling each other, but if the pain faded for Jaemin, who was already suffering an injury, maybe it got ignorable for Jeno, who wanted to put on a brave face for his best friend?

Jaemin hoped that that was the case.

He learned somewhat how to factor the soul-aches out of his pain rating when doctors and therapists asked. He had a counselor that he was required to meet three times a week, and he became the only person he explicitly told. He took online classes for high school.

He spent almost nine months there, and he was scheduled to come back days before his senior year started. He walked through the airport without a wheelchair or a Jeno, and he boarded the plane, and he didn’t get a wink of sleep in the air because he could feel his soul getting restless like it knew that it was about to throw the pain off.

The plane landed. He ran through the airport like a magnet to the waiting area, mindless of the people around him, and Jeno was already waiting for him with his arms stretched out. 

Jaemin threw himself onto him and the ache dripped out of him like he was a sponge that Jeno just had to squeeze tightly enough. “You?” he begged into Jeno’s neck, and Jeno nodded, hands supporting his thighs and face buried in his hair. They spent the car ride like that, attached to each other like octuppi.

Jaemin was the best soulmate he could be. They switched being big or little spoon because they both enjoyed either position equally, and they had similar clothing sizes, so it was more of a clothing exchange than simply giving or getting, and they made food side by side in the kitchen. 

Jaemin didn’t get to dance as much as he would’ve liked, especially not right away, but they let him choreograph a lot of the dances, and he got his duet with Jeno. There was a part where Jeno held him up in a lift, and he felt weightless.

**Author's Note:**

> I did a soulmate au without killing one of the main characters! Crazy!   
> I hope you liked this! The renhyuck subplot was fun, and of course, the nomin was great. Thank you for reading this! Idk what I'll do next, but if anyone has a specific request, I'm open to suggestion.


End file.
